


Shrimp on a String

by OpalizedFossil



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kittens, M/M, Slice of Life, cute stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24158938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpalizedFossil/pseuds/OpalizedFossil
Summary: Galo is late for dinner, because he spots a kitten under a dumpster outside the pizza joint and immediately decides to adopt it.
Relationships: Lio Fotia/Galo Thymos
Comments: 22
Kudos: 181





	1. Chapter 1

Galo is late for dinner.

It isn’t an uncommon occurrence. Something holds him up at the station for at least forty minutes after his shift technically “ends” every other night. So, Lio stashes his takeout in the microwave and busies himself with some leftover dishes from that morning’s breakfast while he waits, peering up at the clock occasionally. Thirty minutes late, he isn’t worried. Forty minutes, only slightly jittery. An hour, and he’s beginning to worry. He can’t help it; it’s in his nature to fret, when the people of his past were an hour late, it usually spelled tragedy and disaster. Now, even in a much safer world, he still worries sometimes. Accidents happen everyday, after all, and no one is as accident-prone (and as prone to mysteriously surviving said accidents) as Galo.

Lio is about to text him and ask where he’s at when he hears the doorknob rattle. Galo crashes through the front door as rambunctiously as usual, the way he does everything, keys jangling obnoxiously in one hand. What  _ isn’t  _ usual is how he kicks the door closed behind him, drops his keys on the end table, and immediately makes a beeline for the guest bathroom without so much as a hello to Lio, who stares after him blankly with a half-washed plate still in hand. Odd. He rinses the plate, places it in the drying rack, and towels his hands off before making his way to the bathroom, the door still slightly ajar.

He knocks. “Galo?”

“Shhh…,” Galo whisper-shouts with no sense of irony, beckoning to him with one finger, “Come in slowly. Be quiet. She’s scared.”

“Who is…?” Lio starts, stepping into the bathroom softly and abruptly silencing when he gets his answer: a soot-colored, street-wraggled, runty little kitten, curled into a pensive ball in the far corner of the room, behind the decorative vanity and its vase of artificial flowers. It’s so small that he imagines it would fit easily into the palm of Galo’s outstretched hand, watching them with apprehensive little black eyes and its tiny ears flattened against its equally tiny head. “Oh. A kitten.”

“She was all alone,” Galo hums, and he’s already giving Lio those miserable puppy eyes that he only uses when he desperately wants to get his way about something. Lio usually can’t help but say yes.

Fortunately, Lio also likes cats. He’s never had one before, never had a pet at all, not even when he was a young child living blissfully carefree in the countryside with his mother so many years ago, but he’s seen them from afar enough to surmise that he likes them. They’re clean animals with a respectable sense of boundaries - and very cute, based on the videos Galo sometimes sends him from work, along with the accompanying clips of puppies, ducklings, hamsters, and assorted other animals that tickle his fancy on any given day.

“I always took you for a dog person,” Lio comments as he sits down on the closed lid of the toilet and gently offers a hand. The kitten hunkers further down in the corner, ears flattening, and spits with the world’s tiniest hiss.

“I’m an  _ animal  _ person,” Galo corrects him, beaming delightedly at the little creature in the corner, “and her name is Lio.”

Lio blinks at him blankly. “We’re not naming it Lio.”

“So, we can keep her?” Galo immediately prompts, with a wriggle of his eyebrows.

“Depends,” Lio remarks, “Are you planning on actually taking care of it? What about when you’re at the station?”

“Of course I’ll take care of her! How hard can it be?” Galo retorts, arms crossed over his eternally bare chest, which has adopted a few more scattered scars over the years, “And she can come with me!”

“Galo, you can’t bring a cat to work with you,” Lio replies, giving him a pointed look, “You have a pet  _ rat  _ at work. How well do you suppose  _ that  _ would work out?”

“She’s not big enough to eat Vinny! Look how little she is!” Galo offers the kitten a finger and Lio is privately surprised when it immediately edges towards him, craning its neck forward just enough to sniff at his fingertip. He smiles, scratching underneath its chin.

“She’s small now,” Lio corrects him, “She won’t always be. Kittens turn into cats, you know.”

“Then...you’ll just have to take care of her while I’m at work!” Galo decides.

Lio chuckles. “Of course. Just don’t be surprised when she ends up loving me more than you.”

“No way!” Galo retorts, snorting like a bull, before his expression melts into that trademark cheery grin of his, “So, we  _ can  _ keep her?”

“I don’t think it would hurt, no,” Lio agrees. Truthfully, it’s rather uncomfortably quiet and lonely in their flat throughout the day, while Galo is at work at the station and Lio is busily working away on his computer. Gueira and Meis visit sometimes, but they, too, have lives of their own now. It’s been a change, not seeing them every single day, but he understands. They  _ briefly  _ had a fish a few years ago, but it wasn’t very good company in the few months it survived with them. A cat might be a welcome change - provided it warms up to him the way it clearly has to Galo, whose hand it’s currently rubbing its fuzzy head against while its entire skeletal frame vibrates with a rolling purr.

After a moment, Lio adds, “Where did you find her?”

“Saw her hiding under the dumpster at the pizza place,” Galo elaborates, gesturing grandly as he weaves the tale of how he came to meet the kitten, “She seemed real hungry and scared, so I tried to catch her, but that just scared her more. But I  _ never  _ back down from a challenge! So, the great Galo Thymos lured her out with a shrimp on a string!”

That conjures some interesting mental images. Lio chuckles. “Where did you get the shrimp?”

“The convenience store next door,” Galo remarks, “They were on sale. And cats like fish, right?”

Lio isn’t sure. “I assume so, if she ate it.”

“She did! She ate like, a ton of food, once I got her back to the station!” Galo replies, gently scooping the tiny kitten up in his cupped hands. Just as Lio suspected, it fits easily in his cupped palms, purring softly as he brings it up to his face and plants a gentle kiss to its fuzzy head. It rubs its head against his chin, mewling softly, and Lio’s heart melts.

“She’s small, I wonder how old she is,” Lio remarks, wondering how to tell how old a kitten is without knowing when it was born. He supposes he’ll have to take it to the vet tomorrow to make sure it’s healthy, since Galo has work.

“Old enough to eat shrimp,” Galo says helpfully, “I wonder where her mom is.”

“You didn’t see any other cats around?” Lio asks.

“No, just Lio!” Galo says with a grin, pecking the kitten’s head once more. It meows at him, tiny jaws stretching wide around the sound to flaunt tiny white teeth like little needles and a pink tongue.

“You aren’t naming her Lio.”

“What about -”

“You aren’t naming her Matoi, either,” Lio adds quickly.

“You’re no fun,” Galo remarks. The kitten meows. “See? She thinks it’s a good name.”

“She’s entitled to her opinion, but she’s wrong.”

“What would  _ you  _ name her, then?” Galo demands as he holds the kitten to his chest, where she promptly begins to knead his generous pecs. Maybe Lio  _ was  _ a fitting name after all.

“I don’t know,” Lio says, “I don’t know anything about her. Aren’t you supposed to wait until you get to know a pet before you name it?”

“No, just name it something stupid and cute! Like doormat!”

Lio scowls. “That’s a horrible name.”

“It’s not like she knows what a doormat is!”

Maybe so, but Lio still isn’t naming the kitten that.

“Here, let me see her,” Lio says, outstretching his hands. Galo gently hands her over. She squirms a little at the change of hands, but Lio holds her steady, bringing her in close to his chest to scritch softly behind her tiny ears. She mewls. He smiles despite himself. “She’s a bit dirty, isn’t she? Can you bathe kittens?”

Galo shrugs.

“Have you ever  _ had  _ a kitten?” Lio asks.

“Nope,” Galo answers.

Lio shakes his head. “Me, neither.”

“But, how hard can it be, right? It’s just one little kitten!” Galo cheers, grinning broadly, “Isn’t this great, Lio? It’s gonna be like we’re parents!”

“Pretty terrible parents,” Lio laments, fingers combing through the kitten’s fur. She has fleas and his fingertips come away sooty grey at the tips when he strokes her.

“Nah, we’re gonna be great!” Galo reassures him.

The evening is spent watching YouTube tutorials on the best ways to bathe a kitten and if liquid flea treatments are safe to use on small kittens (they aren’t). Before nine, the kitten is washed, dried, and fortunately flealess, which Lio makes double and then triple sure of with a fine-toothed comb before he lets her on the bed with them that night.

“She still needs a name,” Galo comments as he clicks the lamp on their nightstand off, the kitten curled up in a tight ball on his pillow while Lio strokes her with a single finger.

“We’ll worry about it in the morning,” Lio replies.

The following morning, Galo leaves for work after breakfast, while Lio leaves the kitten in the guest bathroom while he visits the pet shop, returning with matching bowls and a litter box and a plastic ball with an obnoxiously rattling jingle bell inside of it. He calls a nearby vet and makes an appointment for the next afternoon, while the kitten chases the jingle bell ball in circles in the living room floor, where he finds her dangling from the curtains upside-down a moment later. She’s warmed up to her new home quickly, and is already into mischief.

“You have too much energy for your own good,” Lio tells her when he pries her needle-sharp claws out of the curtains and removes her for the third time that afternoon, watching as she scurries after her ball sideways when he rolls it for her, “You remind me of someone.”

Afternoon fades to evening as Lio sits down with his laptop to work. He can hear the jingle bell ball rattling in the floor beneath him, gradually turning to silence as the kitten entertains herself with scaling the sofa instead. A moment later, she’s asleep beside him, curled against his thigh as he pecks away at his keyboard, reading glasses resting gently on the bridge of his nose against the glaring bright of the screen.

Galo is late for dinner. But, this time, it isn’t because he’s caught up in a conversation at work or because he had a last-minute chore to attend to at the station or even because he’s rescuing a scraggly little kitten from underneath a dumpster with nothing but his burning soul and a shrimp on a string. It’s because he, too, has been at the pet shop - but, instead of essential items like a litter box, he returns with only an armload of toys (including a catnip one shaped like a tiny slice of pizza with embroidered pepperonis and felt cheese) , cat treats that are definitely the feline equivalent of junk food, and a collar that would be small even on Lio’s dainty wrist if he wore it like a bracelet.

Lio shakes his head, smiling faintly. “Why bother with a collar? She’s just going to outgrow it in a few weeks, isn’t she?” He thinks kittens grow quickly, but he isn’t altogether sure.

“Because she needs to look fashionable! Look at it!” Galo remarks, sitting cross-legged in the living room floor while he dangles a feather on a fishing pole for the kitten, who makes great leaps into the air to catch it before wrestling it to the ground and kicking it with all four feet viciously.

Smiling, Lio takes the collar from the coffee table to examine it. It’s simple: nylon -  _ fire engine red _ , of course - with a plastic clasp and a silver o-ring to attach a leash, not that the kitten would be walking on a leash any time soon, if ever. There’s also a metal tag dangling from it, cut out in the shape of a cartoonish fish. Lio turns it over in his hands to read it.

There’s a name inscribed in the metal:  _ Detroit _ .

“Do you like it?” Galo asks sheepishly.

Lio smiles. “I love it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued because I like to talk at length about cats lol.

Detroit turns out to be an insufferable little gremlin bastard, and Lio absolutely adores her.

She meanders between their feet precariously in the hustle and bustle of getting ready every morning, scaling Galo’s clothed legs with needle-sharp claws while he winces and tries to focus on his breakfast. And eventually, every morning without fail, he reaches down and plucks her off of his leg to place her in his lap instead, where she mewls pitifully at him as if she’s never been fed in her life, even though there’s a bowl filled to the brim with kibble sitting nearby, until he surrenders some tidbit of his breakfast to her, before he kisses her fuzzy head, hands her to Lio, and bids them both farewell before he heads to the station.

Lio always attends to a few household chores before he starts his work for the day. Detroit follows him from room-to-room, mewling incessantly until he turns his attention back to her. More often than not, he finds himself picking her up and carrying her, smiling absentmindedly as she nestles her warm little body into his neck and rumbles with a purr, the soft flyaways of her kitten-soft fur tickling at his skin. When he finally sits down to work each day, she sleeps on the sofa beside him for awhile, before clambering down to occupy herself with eating or playing or getting into some mischief, namely climbing the now very much tattered curtains. It’s only been a week and Detroit has already left her mark on their small home - and on Lio.

The vet said she was healthy and administered a few vaccines and a dewormer before she sent her home with Lio two days after Galo found her, in a little cardboard carrier the pet shop had given him the day before. She was mostly quiet the rest of the day, the vaccines making her uncharacteristically groggy and tired, sleeping the hours away in Lio’s lap while he worked on something much less interesting than his new kitten on his laptop, constantly fighting the urge to stroke her or hold her or coo at her. Was this what it was like to have a new baby? He thought so.

But, the following day, the vaccine aftermath wears off and Detroit is back into mischief. A week later, Lio now knows well how she not only likes to scale curtains, but furniture, Galo’s legs, and the side of their bed in the middle of the night when she bails off and then immediately wants back up. He learns that she isn’t a very neat eater, standing in the middle of the plate he serves her pate of wet food on and wearing more of it than she eats, which is how he also learns that she doesn’t care much for baths. After several days’ worth of them, he realizes that Galo didn’t bring him a nearly black kitten, but a medium grey one. Detroit is the color of ash, with a little tuft of white in the middle of her chest and two white toes on her left back foot, which had been as black as the rest of her with grime when Galo found her. He totes her around the house in a towel burrito for an hour after each bath, remembering how the many video tutorials he had watched on the subject emphasized that a freshly bathed kitten needed to be completely dry as soon as possible. He watches a few more videos about kitten care each night that week, because Detroit usually raises more questions than she answers each day. His search history grows more colorful by the hour and, when the internet won’t suffice, he usually texts Galo.

_ Why is she trying to eat plastic? _

_ Why does she meow so much? Is she hungry? I literally just fed her. _

_ Do you think she likes us? _

_ Should we bring her outside? _

His questions are usually accompanied by photos, sometimes of a fresh scratch on the back of his hand with a caption about how she’s such a brat and sometimes of Detroit tucked under his chin in her towel burrito, looking royally pissed while Lio beams at the camera. A week in, Galo is receiving hourly updates and kitten photos. Lio’s camera roll is quickly overrun with snapshots of Detroit, enough to fill a book and then some. He sends them to Guiera and Meis, too, but they’re not nearly as enthusiastic in their responses as Galo.

Saturday comes. Galo doesn’t have work, so he sleeps in, tucked beneath a single white sheet beside Lio with the sun streaming in through the slats in the blinds. Lio is already awake, smiling fondly over at him as he snores like an elk and Detroit purrs between them, but she’s soon on her feet and on the move, meandering over to Lio and mewling at him softly. He pets her. She meows again. He scratches under her chin with one finger. More meowing. He doesn’t know if something is wrong or if she just likes to hear herself talk, reminding him pointedly of Galo, who exhales unsteadily in his sleep, the thick locks of hair that fall in his face drifting in his breath like a breeze. Their movement attracts Detroit, who bumbles over to him.

Galo wakes with a scoff and a mouthful of fur when something tiny, soft, and warm promptly slams head-first into his face, scrambling up his features in pursuit of his hair. Lio chuckles, watching fondly as Galo gently lifts her off of himself, sitting her on his chest instead to stroke her with a hand that envelopes her entire body. “Good morning to you, too,” he mumbles, laughing lazily when she shoots up the length of his body to claw at his shock of blue hair again, “Don’t eat my hair, Detroit.”

“Quite the savage predator, isn’t she?” Lio chuckles, gently plucking Detroit off of Galo’s face to hold her above his instead, peppering her with little kisses, “You’re so cute, you know that?” Detroit wriggles and mewls at him in protest. He puts her down, wiggling his fingers on the mattress for her to wrestle with, not even wincing when her needle-sharp baby teeth assault his fair skin.

“You like her,” Galo states, watching intently with a lazy grin. He’s still half-asleep, eyes half-lidded and hazy.

“Of course I do,” Lio remarks, “She’s my baby.”

“She’s  _ our  _ baby,” Galo corrects him in a rumbling chuckle, “I’m glad I found her. I think you really needed this.”

Lio quirks a sleepy brow. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Galo hums, “You were feelin’ kinda lonely during the day, I could tell. I felt real bad about it and I -”

“Don’t,” Lio discourages him, cupping his cheek with the hand that Detroit isn’t presently mauling with all her tiny baby might, “You have nothing to feel bad for.” His lips tighten into a thin line before he sighs and adds, “But, yes, I am glad you found Detroit. She really livens the place up when you’re not around to do it for her.”

Detroit meows.

“Yes, you,” Lio agrees with her, giving her fuzzy belly a tickle. She’s already much plumper than the skeletal little dustball Galo had brought him a week ago. 

“She’s real cute,” Galo hums, eyelids growing steadily heavier, before his jaws split in a yawn, “Almost as cute as you.”

“Go back to sleep, love,” Lio tells him, “You look tired.”

“‘m not,” Galo grumbles sleepily.

Detroit meows.

“Detroit says you are,” Lio remarks.

“She’s lying,” Galo says even though his eyes have drifted closed.

“Galo, look at her,” Lio replies, and Galo cracks an eye open when he feels the soft warmth of the kitten being placed on his chest. She peers back at him with huge greyish eyes, still tinged blue with her young age. The vet had told Lio she was only six weeks old, a few weeks shy of being ideally ready to leave her mother, but nothing could be done about it if her mother couldn’t be found. So, Lio is her mother now, he supposes. “Would this face lie to you?”

“This face tries to lie to me about you already feeding her everyday,” Galo chuckles, petting her. Detroit purrs, settling down on his bare chest with her tiny limbs tucked neatly underneath herself. “She looks like bread,” he comments after a moment, eyes drifting back closed as he hums contently, “She reminds me of you.”

Lio scoffs. “How?”

“Because when I found her, she was scared and lonely and a little pissed off,” Galo muses, then cracks an eye open to peer at Lio with a sly smile, “Needed me to swoop in and save her.”

Lio scoffs again, but it quickly fades into a smile, before he leans over and pecks Galo gently on the forehead. “She kind of reminds me of you, too.”

“Hmm?” Galo prompts.

“An insufferable bastard,” Lio teases him, threading his fingers through blue hair, “But I still love her.”

Now, it’s Galo’s turn to scoff, but he’s grinning good-naturedly, albeit sleepily. The early morning sunlight streaming in through the blinds tinges his features in a soft golden hue that, even after all these years, still makes Lio’s heart flutter in his chest. Galo will never stop giving him butterflies, he’s sure of it.

“She’s asleep,” Lio comments after a moment. Galo just hums in response and Lio smiles, settling back down beneath the sheet beside him. He feels Galo shifting, then feels the familiar weight of his arm around him, pulling him in closer. Lio is mindful of where he places his head now, not wanting to disturb the sleeping, purring Detroit when she looks so content. He’s obliged to agree with her; Galo’s chest  _ does  _ make a great pillow.

Lio settles in and lets the lull of Galo’s steady breathing and the harmony of Detroit’s purring sing him back to sleep.


End file.
